Simulcasts

A giant white ‘SB’ in a black circle in Radio Times was the thing to look for: it meant it was time to start planning how best to re-arrange your front room to appreciate a perennial of the pre-Nicam age. The Old Grey Whistle Test was the first to try a simulcast, inviting viewers to defy common sense by switching on their radio at the same time as the TV. Sight and Sound in Concert followed, bringing many a ropey turn from a provincial corn exchange to serenade Radio One and BBC2 audiences simultaneously. Each time, Radio Times painstakingly guided your bewildered dad through the business of properly arranging breezeblock-size speakers on the correct sides of the telly – or, in the case of BBC in Quad in 1974, ask viewers to sit with their TV inside a ring of four speakers, two each tuned to Radio Two AND Radio Three. More conventional simulcasting found a home on Top of the Pops, which tested the water on its one-thousandth show in 1983 (a dinner jacketed-Richard Skinner greeting viewers from the Radio One studios) then from September 1988 did it every Thursday until 1991, when the Beeb went properly stereo and the age of the true simulcast was over.

indeed, FM radio is live, but Freeview has to be encoded then decoded which takes time; example: if you have a town where competing pubs have one showing live Sky Sports in HD and one just showing on normal Sky (or even worse, on BBC analogue) there are huge time delays, say BBC analogue to SKY HD @ 4 seconds. I’m sure the Beeb dont do the time signals on BBC R4 on digital radio as they are out by @ 1 sec, but that might have changed by now.

The only time I remember the world ‘simulcast’ was the episode of WWF Raw where Vince McMahon announced that he had bought WCW, and was simulcasting on both live shows.

I remember when ITV had the F1 rights, my dad performing an unofficial simulcast, switching between the ITV and Eurosport TV feeds to avoid adverts, while the radio had the commentary (5live?) but even then everything wasn’t in sync, mostly because Eurosport was via satellite receiver.